Run those .tivo files through VideoRedo like I mentioned earlier and play the .mpg output file. That may clear it up.

I suspect that the TiVo DRM Filter may be having difficulty in some cases with HD content. What cases/causes I have no clue. Playing the mpgs takes that out of the loop. Or perhaps some HD .tivo files have some strange mpg stuff in them and VideoRedo cleans that up. Again, all black magic to me.

No. Recordings transferred with TTG are 100% identical to the original."

is this correct? all of my transfers so far are about 94% of the size of the original, eg. a 7.5gb hd show on the tivo according to desktop, after it transfers to my pc, is about 7gb, a 13.5 gb show is 12gb on the pc. i havent transferred a whole show back and my pc cant play hd, but i've watched it partially on the tivo and it looks fine as it transfers

Yes.

The 160Gb drive in the TivoHD does not actually provide 160Gb of capacity. It provides 160,000,000 bytes of capacity. But there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte. So that 160,000,000 bytes of capacity is actually 152.58 gigabytes (95% of 160Gb).

TiVo does the same thing on the file sizes it reports on the INFO screen. It reports sizes based on multiples of 1000 instead of 1024. Even TiVo Desktop reports sizes incorrectly, because it takes the number of gigabytes (based on 1000) reported by the TiVo and multiples that by 1024 to display megabytes.

I suspect that the TiVo DRM Filter may be having difficulty in some cases with HD content. What cases/causes I have no clue. Playing the mpgs takes that out of the loop. Or perhaps some HD .tivo files have some strange mpg stuff in them and VideoRedo cleans that up. Again, all black magic to me.

Not exactly.

This problem results because some have two different decoder / codec configurations for .Tivo files and .MPG files. It has nothing to do with the Tivo filter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GBL

I can view SD content just fine, but watching HD content, I get no sound and severely distorted and slowed down images.

Windows and Windows Media Player do not include the codec necessary to decode Dolby Digital sound. If you haven't installed a codec to do that (often included with codec packs and DVD player software), then you won't have the software on your PC to decode that audio. Even if you did install DVD player software at some point in the past, it's possible that something in your configuration changed since.

You need the right codec installed on your system. I've had success with this codec pack:

During the first part of the install, choose the Profile 1: Default, and also select the Cyberlink decoder under MPEG-2 and the Microsoft decoder under MPEG-1. During the second part of the install, choose Windows Media Player as your default player. You'll need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

The 160Gb drive in the TivoHD does not actually provide 160Gb of capacity. It provides 160,000,000 bytes of capacity. But there are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes in a megabyte, and 1024 megabytes in a gigabyte. So that 160,000,000 bytes of capacity is actually 152.58 gigabytes (95% of 160Gb).

TiVo does the same thing on the file sizes it reports on the INFO screen. It reports sizes based on multiples of 1000 instead of 1024. Even TiVo Desktop reports sizes incorrectly, because it takes the number of gigabytes (based on 1000) reported by the TiVo and multiples that by 1024 to display megabytes.

To add to the confusion, TD displays Tivo file sizes as Tivo reports them - as 10^9, however in it's own Now Playing list it lists the file sizes in binary MB (2^20). So, as an example if a file is listed as 7.5GB on Tivo NPL then it will be ~ 7152MB (or 6.98GB) in TD NPL once downloaded.

Attempting to transfer the recording back to the same 240 that made the recording, I find the red circle with the message "This recording cannot transfer because the format is HD which is incompatible with this DVR."

In addition, SD videos TTC'd to the TiVo HD will not transfer to the 240 for the same reason.

did i schedule too many transfers? I queued up about 2 seasons worth of TV episodes that I have has avi files. the blue LED went on and the first episode began transferring. I even started playing it to make sure the transfer was working ok. the blue light remained on over night so i figured everything was going fine.

when i checked now playing, i saw that none of the scheduled transfers where available. even that first episode i had played the day earlier wasn't there. so i checked the recording history and each and every episode queued had the following error: "This program was not transfered onto this DVR because the file was larger than expected or because the file was corrupted". so it tried every episode but all failed for some reason.

So, i canceled whatever transfers were still queued but hadn't started yet. I tried transferring just one episode by itself to see what happened. I got the notice that the transfer would begin when other queued transfers were complete - even though there was no longer any transfers scheduled. despite the notice, the transfer began right away, but failed like the others.

I gave it a few hours and even restarted the TiVo a couple times but everytime I try to schedule a transfer it tells me the transfer will begin as soon as previously scheduled transfers are complete - even though none are scheduled.

I left it alone until this morning with nothing scheduled and tried again with just the one transfer and it told me it would start when other transfers were complete. but again, the transfer started right away (but i fully expect to come home from work to find it has failed)

so my question is, why does TiVo still think there are transfers scheduled? did i mess it up by queuing so many initially? Is TiVo "stuck" on a transfer that is not showing up in now playing or to do list and that's why all other transfers are failing somewhere in the process after starting successfully? is there a way to "clear out" the to do list?

What's the most number of files somebody has successfully queued up?

the only thing i have done that i can think of that would cause any problem is that when i first experienced some failed transfers i decided to change the file names in the my tivo recordings folder for tidiness in the now playing screen. i can't remember if i changed something that was scheduled to transfer before i canceled it out. I'm pretty sure i canceled them all first, but maybe tivo hadn't cleared them all from memory yet? is it possible the file name changes confused TiVo and it's still trying to transfer the files under the old names?

i'm not sure what to do. i successfully transfered shows before queuing up the batch of 40+ episodes so something happened. either with the number of shows scheduled or the fact that i changed the names. but i can't get anything to transfer now. not even new files that i've never changed the name of. they all trigger this error "This program was not transfered onto this DVR because the file was larger than expected or because the file was corrupted"

During the first part of the install, choose the Profile 1: Default, and also select the Cyberlink decoder under MPEG-2 and the Microsoft decoder under MPEG-1. During the second part of the install, choose Windows Media Player as your default player. You'll need to reboot for the changes to take effect.

the only thing i have done that i can think of that would cause any problem is that when i first experienced some failed transfers i decided to change the file names in the my tivo recordings folder for tidiness in the now playing screen. i can't remember if i changed something that was scheduled to transfer before i canceled it out. I'm pretty sure i canceled them all first, but maybe tivo hadn't cleared them all from memory yet? is it possible the file name changes confused TiVo and it's still trying to transfer the files under the old names?

i'm not sure what to do. i successfully transfered shows before queuing up the batch of 40+ episodes so something happened. either with the number of shows scheduled or the fact that i changed the names. but i can't get anything to transfer now. not even new files that i've never changed the name of. they all trigger this error "This program was not transfered onto this DVR because the file was larger than expected or because the file was corrupted"

any thoughts?

Well, I would have led with this. That is certainly suspicious.

Have you tried restarting both the TiVo and the PC to see if you get lucky?

Can you transfer videos that don't require transcoding through TD Plus?

For me WMP is setup to use InterVideo Video Decoder and it works fine for playback of 480i, 720p & 1080i shows obtained via TTG from my S3s. Note that 1080i especially requires pretty good graphics card GPU and in some cases hardware acceleration to play back properly on your PC. Perhaps your Centrino is just not up to snuff for 1080i playback? You may want to try Media Player Classic since it's known to be very light weight and not requiring much horsepower to handle HD decoding. If that works then that indicates your system is not powerful enough to work with WMP.
NOTE: Of course you will have to convert .TiVo files to .mpg first before you can use Media Player Classic which you can do with free utils such as DirectShow Filter dump.

Suppose you want to use codec #4. When you hit the button in the Windows Video Decoder Checkup utility to "Set as Preferred," all it does is increase the priority or merit to 100. But it doesn't change the fact that you already have three other codecs set to 100. I'm not sure what criteria is used to pick codecs that share the same merit.

The Microsoft Windows Video Decoder Utility does not let you reduce the priority of a codec. But you can do that using the DirectShow Filter Manager. This free utility will display a list of all the available installed video and audio codecs, as seen in the picture below:

Click the "Merit" category to sort by priority. Scroll down to the pink entries at the bottom. The pink entry closest to the bottom has the highest merit or priority. With the "Show filer properties" button, you can decrease the priority of codecs you do not want (or that don't seem to be working right in Windows Media Player) and increase the priority of those that you do. The changes will not take effect in Windows until you reboot.

After the reboot, drag and drop your MPG or .Tivo file in Graphedit to confirm the codec changes are as you desire.

Before making any changes, you may want to create a system restore point so you can go back to your original (existing) configuration at a later time.

If someone can come up with a simpler method of changing the default codec/filter for MPG and/or Tivo files, I will add it to the FAQ.

I transferred a 2 1/2 hr movie from my S2 to my S3. The Closed Caption is now about 5 seconds ahead (or behind, I can't remember) of the actually audio. The movie is fine on the S2. I transferred a 1 hr TV show and it was okay. The movie was recorded at Best and the TV show was one step down from that. I know the S3 has to do some translation on the mpeg data, could it be messing up the CC? Has anyone else had this problem (I tried a search, but found nothing)?

Ok, so last night I deleted the TD cache files, restarted the PC and restarted the TiVo. Trying to transfer an avi failed as before. trying to transfer an mpeg2 file worked normally (it said the transfer was starting immediately rather than saying it would begin when other transfers were complete). after the successful mpeg2 transfer i tried again with another avi file and once again it said it would begin transfer as soon as other transfers were complete but started transferring immediately. It's going now, but experience says it will fail shortly.

TiVo definitely seems to be confused about something.

Any recommendations? should i clear everything out of my TiVo recordings folder and start over? should i call TiVo customer service at this point? I'm at a loss.

The (S2-based, i.e., analog) Closed Captioning is inextricably tied to the video, so if there is any synchronization issue, it is between the audio and video.

Hmmm, all I can say is the audio and video are in sync and the closed caption is off by 2-3 seconds (yeah, I know I said 5 seconds before, it just seemd that long ). I've seen this in other recordings and assumed it was something the cable company had done. I thought the closed caption was in the vertical blanking interval so how can it be off from the video (unless there is some processing delay)? Maybe i need a new TV (not sure my wife would buy that) .

Hmmm, all I can say is the audio and video are in sync and the closed caption is off by 2-3 seconds (yeah, I know I said 5 seconds before, it just seemd that long ). I've seen this in other recordings and assumed it was something the cable company had done. I thought the closed caption was in the vertical blanking interval so how can it be off from the video (unless there is some processing delay)? Maybe i need a new TV (not sure my wife would buy that) .

Was the program you were concerned about captioned "live" or was it recorded and captioned later? Live unscripted programs always have a few seconds delay because the captioner can't press the buttons until s/he hears the words. Frequently the captioner is in a different part of the country which adds to the electronic transmission delays.

Pre-recorded programs can be synced properly. Live programs that work from a script may also be captioned properly because they simply feed the teleprompter to the closed captions.

Appologies if this is the wrong forum to ask this. I have a Tivo HD and just downloaded the desktop 2.5.1. Apparently of my 82 recording all are copy protected and can't be transfered EXCEPT the hi-def law and order recordings. This appears to be exactly backward of what my understanding was. Anyone else experience this?

I hope that I'm not asking too much. I know that the end of the first message shows when you have edited it but might it be possible for you to place a date at the top of the message, too so that it can be glanced at to see if it has been edited recently?? (too bad the software does not show the edit line at the top in some cases)

so, I'm thinking part of my problem may be frame rate as none of the files i am having trouble with are the recommended 29.97. but if that were the issue, wouldn't it not transfer at all? As I've pointed out before, i can get all of these files to start transferring and can watch them as they do, and there is no prob with picture or sound. but then somewhere along the way it fails.

anyway, what would be the easiest way to change the frame rates on these avi files so i can test to see if that is the issue? kind of a drag because I thought TD Plus would allow me to upload files without any transcoding at all.

I have a S3 and S2 DT My Tivos can see each other, but since the update (9.2j) my computer cannot see either of my Tivos. I am ecstatic that I can now transfer between Tivos, but would like the option with computer as well.
My Tivos can access my pictures and music on my computer.
Tried forcing a connection, no luck
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Tivo desktop, but same thing.
Anyone got any ideas?

I have a S3 and S2 DT My Tivos can see each other, but since the update (9.2j) my computer cannot see either of my Tivos. I am ecstatic that I can now transfer between Tivos, but would like the option with computer as well.
My Tivos can access my pictures and music on my computer.
Tried forcing a connection, no luck
I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Tivo desktop, but same thing.
Anyone got any ideas?